Loose Wire - the book  

 

Loose Wire: A Personal Guide to Making Technology Work for You (Paperback, Equinox Publishing, 2006)

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (September 29, 2006)

Language: English
ISBN-10: 9793780398
ISBN-13: 978-9793780399
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches 

 

"He makes difficult subjects much easier to understand and writes in a breezy, flowing manner that makes his columns so popular. Highly recommended" - Phil Baker, columnist and entrepreneur

After I'd been writing the column for five years I realised that a weekly format didn't always help the kind of user I most wanted to help -- ordinary people who found themselves in the midst of a digital revolution without a decent map. I would write about phishing scams, only to get emails from readers saying "what is a browser?" A weekly diet of 1,000 words just wasn't helpful as a reference for folk who were battling away at mastering their computer, even as the ground was shifting beneath them. So I got together with a friend, Mark Hanusz of Equinox Publishing, and we decided to put all the most useful columns into a book that people could plonk next to their laptop and refer to when necessary.

The material was mostly derived from my column in The Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review, but we added notes where necessary and updated what needed updating. I'm very happy with the result, and in particular the response from older users.  

Here's a list of chapters to give you an idea what I cover:

Mobile phones
Wifi
VoIP
USB drives
Traveling
Contacts
Selling online
Customer support
Email
Organizing
Search
File managers
Productivity tools
Scanning
Keyboards
Looking after your computer
Backup
Browsers
Surfing
Encyclopedias
Blogs
RSS
Podcasting
Nigerian scams
Viruses and firewalls
Credit card fraud
Phishing
Spam
Passwords
Privacy

If that doesn't cover all your computer needs, then at least you might enjoy the use of British place names to describe technology-related issues that haven't been named yet. (An appledore , for example, is someone who touts the superior benefits of Macintosh computers at parties, even after the dancing has started.)

Loose Wire,  A Personal Guide to Making Technology Work for You, is available either from Amazon or from the publisher. If you're living in Japan you can get it from Amazon Japan, and in the UK from Amazon's UK site.